Bruce Eckel, who has written articles and books on Java and C++, has some
surprisingly nice things to say about Python in his article at Borland.com:
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Where does Python fit? Everywhere else. It's both a
programming language and a scripting language, but it's very
nicely object-oriented from the ground up, easy to learn and
use. In fact, I think it could be the ideal beginner's language.
You can write command-line programs and GUI programs.
You can write programs to test your design, then re-code the
programs in C++ or Java once you've gotten the kinks out. But
to me the key is productivity. I seem to be able to develop
programs 10 times faster than in C++ or Java, and for that
reason I'm willing to write programs in Python that I wouldn't
trouble myself with in other languages, simply because using
those languages would take too long. Although many programs
for Linux will be written in Java or C++, there will be lots of
smaller solutions as well because of Python. Perl, Tcl/TK, and
Rebol will also be used, but I don't think those languages
scale as well as Python. Nor is the code they produce as
maintainable, which means they won't be as heavily used in
the end.
http://community.borland.com/devnews/article/1,1714,20173,00.html
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Bruce's publications:
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Since 1986, Bruce Eckel (www.BruceEckel.com) has published over 150
computer articles and 6 books, four of which were on C++, and
given hundreds of lectures and seminars throughout the world. He is
the author of Thinking in Java (Prentice-Hall 1998, freely available
at www.BruceEckel.com; 2nd edition in progress on the Web site),
the Hands-On Java Seminar CD ROM (available at
www.BruceEckel.com), Thinking in C++ (Prentice-Hall, 1995; 2nd
edition in progress on the Web site), C++ Inside & Out
(Osborne/McGraw-Hill 1993; the 2nd edition of Using C++,
Osborne/McGraw-Hill 1989) and was the editor of the anthology
Black Belt C++ (M&T/Holt 1994). He was a founding member of the
ANSI/ISO C++ committee. He speaks regularly at conferences and
is the track chair for both C++ and Java at the Software
Development conference.
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Jeff